


Some Permanent Truth

by smolhombre



Series: For You [2]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Also My Kink, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Family, First Meetings, Flawed Characters Trying Their Best, Food as a Flirting Mechanism, Getting Together, Graphic depictions of Food, Introspection, Literally a lot of food, M/M, Marriage, PTSD, Patience and Understanding, Repression and Denial, That's My Kink, you don't have to read part 1 to read this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-11-28 22:28:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11427504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolhombre/pseuds/smolhombre
Summary: Queenie loves Jacob before he even reaches out to take her hand.





	1. Spring

Queenie loves Jacob before he reaches out to shake her hand. Arguably, she loves him before she’s stood close enough to smell the leather and sugar on his warm skin.

Tina would say that’s silly, of course. She’s always felt Queenie put too much faith in the hunches she has about people. Then again, she’s also the first person to drag Queenie along to meet potential suitors, regardless of her voiced skepticism. Queenie has been on this very same double-date farce perhaps more times than Tina would like her to admit.

But.

Queenie can’t deny the little ripple at her spine as she and Tina crest the steps to the movie theater. She’s met Newt in passing once before, and he’s smiling at them brightly as he waves them over. Beside her, Tina is pink cheeked and bright eyed grinning back, her pace picking up like she’s being pulled forward by an invisible thread. Her feet are smaller than Queenie’s, and she’d borrowed her shoes tonight, so Queenie grabs her elbow and slows her down lest she fall out of them in her hurry.

Tina doesn’t seem appreciative, per se, but being a sister is a thankless job more often than not. Queenie still doesn’t let her go and risk Tina busting her ass in front of her date. Her date, and, in theory, Queenie’s.

Queenie’s, who she can’t bring herself to really look at until they are close enough to touch, hyper-aware of that certainty in her body that he is something special, at least something Queenie might want.

But.

This is about Tina, and not about her. The double date is a sham. Queenie greets Newt with a little kiss to his freckled cheek and tries to school her face to pleasant blankness before looking to her date.

The man beside Newt is shorter and broader than his friend, and is fiddling with his shirtsleeves, his jacket draped in the crook of one elbow. He rolls them up to his elbows to reveal thick forearms, dusted in coarse hair also dark at the open collar of his navy shirt. His beard is plush at his heavy jaw, and there is a feeling in her gut like liquid velvet, rippling and hot.

Queenie is uninterested as a rule.

...But.

Her heart is thick with promise in her throat as the marquee lights from above flash cerulean in the hollows of his face, ruby in the shine of his thick, curly hair. He very carefully doesn’t look below her chin.

“Jacob, ma’am.”

Her knuckles go white around his grip, and to his credit he doesn’t flinch at all. Tina hooks their arms together when she lets go, and guides them to their seats as Newt and Jacob stand in line for popcorn.

“Do I want to know what that was?”

Queenie nudges Tina’s arm none too gently with a pointy elbow.

“That was me being an exemplary wingwoman, as usual. Newt seems nice.”

Tina hardly gets a chance to look at her sideways before Newt and Jacob return, laden with food. Jacob hardly looks her way and sits on the opposite side of Newt, and Queenie plays Crossy Road until the movie starts. Tina and Newt talk throughout the show, and Queenie is content to doze and hog Tina’s icee in her cupholder. It’s not the worst date she’d third-wheeled on. More than once she’d had to bat away a set of wandering hands, which left Tina moping and tip-toeing around her guiltily for sometimes several days after. More often the other third wheel in question thought she was interested in an actual date, and overestimated their role as a buffer so Tina’s date didn’t feel the weight of Queenie’s assessment so heavily.

Queenie risks a few sidelong glances when she thinks Tina and Newt’s giggling will hide it. Jacob seems very comfortable to actually watch the movie, and despite the fact that he’s doing not much else but looking forward to the screen and occasionally putting popcorn in his mouth, Queenie can’t keep herself from looking over.

The fifth time, he catches her.

She’s ready to apologize when he tilts the popcorn to her.

“Did you want some?” He whispers. “I don’t mean to hog it.”

Queenie grabs a handful with a grateful smile. Close save. “Thank you, Jacob.”

She makes herself eat the popcorn two kernels at the time, and keeps her eyes on the screen until the last of the credits scrolls up to black.

Newt has his arm slung around Tina’s shoulders as they exit to the lobby. Tina has always hated PDA, but she isn’t trying to shrug him off now, even if she’s looking around the atrium like she’s worried someone would judge two grown adults showing moderate affection for each other in a nearly empty theater.

Queenie bumps her hip against Tina’s, smiling. Tina would get what she meant. “I think I’m going to quiz you two on the movie. Do you even know what the title was?”

“I’ll buy you another ticket if you want to see it...uninterrupted,” Newt says sheepishly. It only makes Queenie smile wider.

“Aren’t you _sweet_.”

Tina stands on her foot while Newt holds the door open for them, Jacob trailing behind. The air is rain-sweet as they step out underneath the theater’s awning, cool and soft with the earliest promise of spring. Tina, perpetually prepared, is digging an umbrella out of her big, well worn bag. Queenie is content to walk through it — she’s always loved the rain, and they aren’t parked far, anyway — but then there is a warm weight beside her. Jacob holds his jacket aloft over her head. He stills like a deer when she turns to look at him.

“Is this not — can I walk you to your car?”

He looks like he’s wanting to take the jacket back, a bit.

“That’s real nice. Thank you.”

Even as she says it, she doesn’t move immediately, letting Tina have a head start. In front of them, Newt unsuccessfully tries to duck underneath the umbrella Tina is holding high as her tippy-toes allow. Queenie watches her flats, on her sister’s feet, trod through the warm puddles in the asphalt, staining irreparably.

Jacob is waiting for her to start walking. All around her is that sweet leather smell, and the inkling towards want has Queenie stepping forward, desperate suddenly for the reprieve of Tina’s little Jetta.

She doesn’t do this for a reason. Several reasons. Good ones, at that. Jacob keeps pace with her as she tries to list them, but the thoughts are all jumbled.

Tina and Newt are bent close under the umbrella at the driver’s side, talking softly. The passenger’s door is locked when Queenie jiggles the handle, and she looks up to Jacob apologetically.

“Sorry. You don’t have to —” she reaches up very carefully to guide Jacob’s jacket over his own head.

“I really don’t mind. My hair’s not gonna look any worse if it gets wet.”

The door clicks softly beside her as Tina unlocks it.

“It’s alright. I like the rain.” Jacob steps back to allow her to open the door, and she is smiling despite herself. “And I think your hair looks fine. Thank you for walking me back. It was...very nice to meet you.”

He holds the door open as she sits. His jacket is back in the crook of his elbow, and the rain is plastering his curls flat to his head. He doesn’t seem to mind.

“You too, ma’am.”

Jacob shuts the door gently, and Queenie watches his and Newt’s backs get smaller as Tina cranks the car and reverses out of their spot. They jostle and nudge at each other’s shoulders, dripping wet and unhurried, as they walk to their own car. Newt throws his head back in a laugh big enough Queenie can see it as they turn out of the lot, and Jacob claps him around the back of the head. They’re close. They love each other a lot, that much is clear with her hunches or otherwise, and it spreads some warm fondness in Queenie’s chest that makes her happy to have come with Tina tonight, after all.

“Newt is nice,” she says again, as they sit underneath a red light a few moments later. Tina half turns in her seat to look at her, and doesn’t speak until the light is green.

“...Is he the only one?”

-

Queenie is very surprised to see Newt when she goes to meet Tina for lunch four days later.

Newt’s grip on the Sub Station bags in his hands fumbles a bit as she rounds the corner in Tina’s objectively depressing, largely windowless hall. She’s one of two offices in this little alcove off the fourth floor’s main stretch, and though her door is shut they can hear her yelling on the phone.

“Hello, Queenie. How have you — been? I’m sorry, I didn’t think to ask if Tina already had plans…”

“It’s alright, I’m alright. I just wanted to stop by and make sure she ate something today,” she looks down at the food in his hands. “This new case is wearing her thin. I’m glad you’re taking care of her.”

“I’m trying, at least.”

Newt’s smile is sheepish as Queenie props herself up on the wall next to him. From behind the door, Tina’s shrill voice cuts like a knife.

“I am _telling_ you, that is _unacceptable_ —”

They both wince. Newt slides down the wall to sit with his legs stretched out in front of him, so Queenie is looking to the auburn crown of his hair when she tries to break the tension now settled around them both.

“Tina said you’re a vet?”

“Mhm. Exotic animals, mostly. I’ve been at this clinic here for...almost two years, now?”

“We weren’t allowed to have pets growing up. I can’t imagine being around dogs all day, much less...whatever it is you see. Lizards?”

Newt snorts. “I have seen my fair share of lizards. If you ever want to come by, I’ll make sure to break you in with something toothless. Or at least cuddly.”

Queenie pretends to consider. “Hm. Pass.”

Their little chuckles taper off to a pleasant enough silence, until Queenie can’t help herself.

“So. Does Jacob work with you, then? Is that how you two know each other?”

Newt’s laugh when it comes now is easier, bigger. “No. We met after he sent me to the hospital.”

Queenie is very sure he is joking, until she sees the wistful set to his brows and realizes he isn’t.

“I...assume you’re alright.”

“You know, he said something similar after I woke up.” Newt looks up at her, and his eyes reflect oddly in the yellow overhead lights. “You two are a lot alike. Tina and I were talking about it after the movie, actually.”

Beside her, Tina opens her door, brow creased and looking tired. She jumps at seeing them both.

“I didn’t know if I was having auditory hallucinations or not.”

“With as little sleep as you’ve been getting, anything is possible. You just lucked up with two people who care about keeping you on your feet.”

Newt rises to his feet beside her, the bags crinkling in his hands. Queenie bites the inside of her cheek as she watches Tina’s gaze pull back to him over and over, as if by a magnet.

“I’ll let you two eat, I just wanted to check on you.”

“Oh, Queenie, you don’t have to leave —”

She waves him off. “Please. Enjoy your lunch, this gives me an excuse to visit that new place that opened up near the salon. I should be thanking you.”

“My shirt looks good on you, by the way,” Tina calls to her retreating back. Queenie just looks over her shoulder and gives them both a little wink.

“Make sure she eats at least half of her sandwich, Newt!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

-

If she didn’t expect to see Newt in Tina’s office, she could have never dreamed seeing Jacob behind the display counter at the bakery.

“Oh.”

“Oh.”

She watches him straighten behind the register, his apron dusted with flour.

“Hi, Jacob.”

“Ma’am.”

The bakery is mostly windows on all but one side, and that wall is taken up by an impressive bar of homemade jams, butters, and honeys, and a line of people queueing to spread them on their plates. For a new place, midway through a weekday, it’s decently busy; more tables are full than not, and Queenie sees several little placards in the glass counter where some of the fresh, warm breads and pastries have sold out already.

“Is this your place?”

“I’m working on it,” Jacob says, somewhere between proud and bashful.

“It’s lovely. It smells incredible.”

Jacob straightens, taking up more space in his skin when he smiles at her. “Can I get you something?”

“I’m not that picky. What would you suggest?”

“...Are you. I. Are you gonna stick around to eat it, or do you have to split?”

Her chest creaks oddly, like an old floorboard suddenly burdened with a wayward foot. She looks up at the clock behind him. The walk to Tina’s office and then to here has eaten up most of her lunch break, and she tries to not grimace looking back down at him.

“I can’t stay. Sorry.”

“Sure. Sure. Let me — give me a minute.”

Queenie looks over the items in the display as Jacob walks back to the kitchen. There’s fresh breads of all kinds, but also delicate pastries that are shaped with whimsy designs, some even formed like animals. She’s marvelling over a little elephant made of delicate cream puffs in different sizes and held together with neat dots of white chocolate when he returns with a big, sturdy white paper bag, neatly rolled at the top.

“You do all these yourself?”

“I let some of the least putz-y ones in the back help with the macarons. Sometimes they can fill the eclairs, but otherwise they can’t be trusted for anything real delicate.” He clears his throat before leaning carefully on the glass with his forearms. “Would you like one? The elephant?”

“I would feel to guilty to eat it,” she says honestly, still bent over and admiring it.

“...Something else, then. You don’t have an allergy, do you?” Jacob reaches in for a fat, glistening sticky bun, heaped with pecans, with a piece of thick wax paper. “I’m still messing around with the caramel on this one, so it might not be perfect. But —”

“I don’t think it’s good business to sell yourself short, Mr. Kowalski.” Queenie pulls out her wallet, grinning, and is midway through sliding out her debit card when Jacob stops her.

“No, no. On the house.”

“That’s no way to run a restaurant.”

Jacob’s cheeks are pink, and he is busy refolding the first paper bag. “To make up for the other night.”

Queenie’s hand is very nearly on his wrist when she stops herself. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“I just. I don’t know if Tina or Newt told you I was coming, and it seemed like I took — or, if I made you think I wanted...anything. Newt is socially inept, he just needed some help. If I made you uncomfortable, I’m sorry.”

Oh, no.

Jacob’s pulse is steady underneath the soft, thin skin of his wrist when Queenie puts a tentative hand there.

“You didn’t. You didn’t. I promise. Tina brought me for the same reason,” she tries for a little smile. “I’m not always good with new people. I should apologize for making you feel like that’s your fault.”

“I don’t believe that’s true,” Jacob says finally. “You not being good with people. I have a hard time imagining that.”

Queenie’s stomach is impossibly tight. She wants to brush her thumb along the thrumming river of his pulse under her hand. She wants to stay and sit in one of the little tables tucked away half behind the long counter and explore the stirring heat in her gut. She wants, and she hasn’t wanted for some time.

Behind them, the bell chimes, and a solemn faced man in an immaculate suit queues behind her, his shoes making crisp clicks on the floor and sunlight shining off the grey at his temples.

It does not matter what she wants or doesn’t.

“I won’t take your money,” Jacob says firmly. “Just let me know what you think about that caramel.”

“...If you’re sure.” She is slow despite herself and the waiting customer while collecting the bags. “I’ll see you around, Jacob.”

Outside, spring is new and only threatening a heavy, humid heat. For now that promise is a distant one, and Queenie walks underneath the barely budding, pink trees lining the street back to her salon thinking about words, their weight, and the value of a bond.

-

The sandwich is piled high with thinly shaved roast beef and a sharp cheddar, the ultra soft bread smeared with an herbed butter and toasted perfectly. Somehow, it’s still warm when she makes it back to the office in the salon, and the little cup of au jus was wrapped carefully enough none of it spilled. There’s a bag of homemade chips laid on top, and Queenie only manages one bite before she gets up to lock the office door so she can enjoy it in private.

Each bite makes her feel guiltier for not paying.

After she finishes the sticky bun, Queenie stares at the decimated paper wrappings left from her lunch for a very long minute. She is slow grabbing her phone and typing out a text to Tina. She should thank Jacob personally, for a lunch so good.

“Do you think you can get Jacob’s number for me?”

She doesn’t send it.

-

She and Tina have thrown around the idea of moving back in together several times since Tina finished her second Master’s. Some days, Queenie misses it. Her condo is not big, really, but it feels cavernous and empty and a little cold some nights when she gets home too late.

Some nights, anyway. Sometimes the salon is loud, a bride cries because she hates her trial chignon, a parent tries to chop off more hair than their child wants and they throw tantrums, the other stylists are catty or fighting and in the back, sometimes, there will be a screamer getting their first bikini wax.

The dark quiet is nice, those nights. Her living room looks out into the courtyard of the complex, and her window is perfectly placed to look over the new fountain they’d put up a few months back. If she is very still, and it is very late, she thinks she can hear the water gurgling out from it even from two floors up.

Tonight, though. She wants the quiet, and also another body taking up the excess space around her. The darkness, and also the hum of another person’s breathing warm in the air. Queenie thinks, maybe, she wants a specific one.

She had nearly stopped by the bakery again for another sandwich after her last appointment, but she’s not, to use one of Tina’s favorite phrases, a total punk.

Queenie turns on all the lights on the first floor and pours herself two fingers of bourbon while she busies herself seasoning some buttermilk to soak her chicken thighs in. The pan on the stove is hissing and popping oil as she searches for a bowl big enough to dredge them in.

She sets up her little assembly line on the bar separating the kitchen from the entryway, and as she rolls the chicken in eggs and flour and plops them into the spitting oil, Queenie doesn’t look away from her wedding ring in the little catch-all dish in front of her.


	2. Summer

Her husband’s hands are kind. Her husband’s hands are heavy. Her husband’s hands are iron and the smell of the piney cologne she’s bought him for three years now gripping at her chin.

Her husband doesn’t hurt her, but she thinks, sometimes, she hurts him.

“I feel like you’re in my head.”

She smiles, and her bottom lip brushes his thumb still trapping the dimple in her chin. “Sometimes I think I am too. Is that so bad?”

Her husband’s hand is warm when it rakes through her hair to cup the back of her skull, gentle like it’s a baby bird in his possession, and not her. He kisses her cheek.

“All we can do is figure out.”

-

“It tastes even better than last week. I don’t know how that’s possible.”

Jacob looks her over critically. He has his reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, receipts crinkling in his hands and covering most of the table between them. The coffee in front of him fogs the lenses, his sweet, droopy brown eyes clouded over in white steam. Maybe he isn’t looking at Queenie at all, really, and she just wants him to be.

“You come in here every Thursday and no matter what you try, you say that.”

Queenie licks some stray amaretto cream from her thumb. She’s tempted to lick the crumbs from her plate; he’d made it for her especially after she’d come in, fat dollops of rich cream over a spiced pound cake and topped with airy, crumbled meringues and slivered almonds. Queenie had been near tears at the first bite, and she is not lying to him in the least. “Is that so bad?”

“...If it’s true, no.”

The days are stretching longer and looser as summer fully unfurls itself from the dregs of spring, and the warm sunset streaming in the window beside her seems suspended in the same shade of orange now as it was when Jacob closed the place forty five minutes ago.

She takes a sip of her coffee. Jacob doesn’t put too much sugar in it. It’s very good, in her tea drinking opinion.

“Are you calling me a liar, Mr. Kowalski?”

Her toes curl a bit despite herself as he looks up at her, mouth already forming an apology, before seeing the grin on her face.

“Maybe I’m just questioning your taste, sweetheart.”

Heat as languid and easy as the sinking sun beside them spreads in that thin vacancy between her skin and the muscle beneath.

“If you stopped making everything in here so good, maybe it would be easier.”

Jacob very visibly weighs the next words out on his tongue as he says them.

“Then what would keep you coming back?”

Queenie’s ankle barely brushes his shin as she crosses her legs under the table. “The company, of course.”

His phone dings. She doesn’t know what makes her ask, unable to stop herself, but she’s close to chewing her lips off as soon as it’s out in the air between them.

“Is that your girlfriend?”

“N-no. No. Just Newt. Annoying. _Very_ annoying Newt.”

Queenie watches him fiddle with his phone for a minute. Outside, the sun is red. A dying color, sudden like the horizon’s strings have been cut. It’s not warm on her bare shoulder, anymore. She’s going to have to leave, eventually.

“Tina is sweet on him.”

“I reckon the feeling is mutual. He won’t shut up about her.” Jacob freezes so quickly his phone clatters out of his hands and onto the table. “I mean — not in a bad way. Tina, she seems like a...good egg. Classy lady. Patience of a saint, to put up with Newt. He’s real high-maintenance.”

“I’ll make sure to pass your approval along.”

“...I don’t, ah. Have one,” Jacob says as she’s two sips from the bottom of her coffee mug. “A girl. Not that you want to know, or whatever.”

Queenie doesn’t have an answer to that she’s comfortable with. “I don’t know if I’ve been said this already or not, but I appreciate you letting me darken your door. Staying after you close, I mean. Letting me talk your ear off.”

“I appreciate you coming by. Makes closing easier.”

“I make you that eager to get home?”

“If I didn’t know you were teasing, Queenie, I don’t know what I’d think about you.”

She presses the pad of her thumb into the spires of her fork until blood is pricking close to the skin. It is violet velvet pressing close to the windows, and though neither of them have moved, Queenie thinks it’s pressing them close, too.

“Maybe there isn’t anything to think.”

-

Queenie wears her wedding ring, sometimes, unsure if she’ll get the chance to wear one again. Her husband isn’t a bad man, though sometimes she has a hard time convincing other people of that. She isn’t sure if she’ll ever marry again, or if she wants to. But it’s nice to have something to fiddle with. It’s nice to wear, sometimes, when she’s out. Men don’t bother her as much, it’s like an invisibility cloak.

If such a thing were real, of course.

Tina hates it.

So today, perched on the corner of Tina’s desk, Queenie rubs absently at the place a ring would rest as Tina re-arranges her file on the Barebones, despite their standing lunch appointment.

“I’m sorry,” she says absently, not very much repentant. “I know you’re hungry I just —”

“Say, if you want to bring them by the shop I’ll give them both something nice. Just let me know when, I’ll clear everyone else out. No eavesdroppers.”

“Thank you. She — Modesty, that’s her name. She asked if she could get her hair cut when we first met, actually. That Woman wouldn’t let any of the girls do anything with it.”

Queenie waves her ringless hand. Her nails are buffed, oyster pink, and shine in the light. “I’ll give her whatever she wants. What about the boy?”

“Credence? Yes. He’ll want a new one, but he’ll need you to tell him so. Or Modesty will have to decide, I’m sure she’ll enjoy that.”

“...He doesn’t like you.” Queenie can’t keep the smile from her voice. Tina has the same petulant face in her thirties as she did when she was six. “Tina, you know better than to let that get to you. Sometimes they are just wary, you know that better than anyone. He’s got some baggage with older women.”

Tina squawks. “ _Older women_?!”

Queenie is doubled over with her giggles as Tina shuts the door to her file cabinet with more force than necessary. She is hungry, and she did want to actually go to lunch. But this isn’t so bad, either.

“Alright, you little shit. Why don’t we talk about you for a second, huh?”

She shrugs. “Nothing to talk about.”

“Newt told me that Jacob’s bakery has got a new regular customer.”

“...Did Jacob mention that to Newt?”

Tina looks up at her incredulously, a smile blooming on her face.

“I thought you’d grow up to be a crazy cat lady.”

“My condo has a no pet policy. I don’t even like cats. What do you do with them?”

“You really _liiiike_ him,” Tina smirks, sing-song and undeterred by Queenie’s attempted deflection. Her chest aches a bit, and she's unable to not grin along with her sister. If Tina allowed herself to be goofy and soft like this with her coworkers or some of her cases, she'd probably not be in this cramped closet of an office. “Queenie, why don’t you ask him out? I —”

“Would you look at the time! You’ve worked through our lunch date. Again. Pity.”

-

Technically, she should be going to see Jacob after she finishes cleaning her booth up for the night. Mondays and Thursdays; the same schedule they’ve had for seven weeks tonight. But...now, after talking with Tina, Queenie thinks she has to prove to herself that she can go without seeing him, if she wants to.

And, you know, even if she doesn’t.

She doesn’t trust herself to have his number. Still, her fingers itch to text him and let him know she won’t be coming.

-

She goes home and orders pizza and is somehow miserable through each bite, even as she turns on _The Beguiled_ and watches Colin Farrell sweat in open collared period shirts. Maybe she made a mistake.

Queenie goes through her closet and makes a box of the things she thinks will fit Modesty, and throws in the few pieces still left from her husband for Credence, just for the sake of something to do. Tina is on a date with Newt, so afterwards, instead of calling and watching _The Bachelor_ together like they would normally do, Queenie soaks in her tub until she’s pruny and imagines all the ways her night could have gone if she’d walked to the bakery instead.

-

It feels like an apology, and also pretty stupid, when she walks into his bakery the next Monday, five minutes after close and holding stacks of tupperware.

The door is still open when she pushes against it with her hip. Jacob is wiping down tables by himself near the butter bar, and it takes him a minute to raise his hand in greeting.

“Hey, stranger.”

She lifts the tupperware. “Hey, strudel.”

“I don’t usually let people bring outside food in my restaurant.”

Queenie stops, mid-step and still grinning. Of course, he would be mad at her for skipping out on him, even if it wasn’t a spoken agreement that she would come.

Had he waited? Sat at their table and let his coffee cool in erratic half moons over the day’s receipts?

“Oh, I — I didn’t mean anything by it. You don’t have to take it.”

Jacob pries the tupperware from her frozen, clawed hands.

“Don’t try and take it back now! I was only joking, sorry. You can bring anything in here you like. Coffee. Do you want coffee?” He pauses midway behind the counter, grabbing forks and plates. “You...if you can stay, I mean.”

“What tea do you have? Need a little something for my nerves, I think.”

“Is everything alright?” Jacob has his hand half outstretched as if to catch her wrist, his brow all tight knots. She catches it briefly as he pulls away, her thumb barely making an arc on the back of his hand before dropping it.

“You’re sweet to ask. I had a long appointment today, but I’m alright. Thank you.”

“...Did you...accidentally turn their hair green, or something?”

Queenie snorts. Jacob is pouring hot water from an electric kettle over a bag of ceylon and sliding it her way, and she makes a show of looking affronted as she accepts it.

“You think I’m that bad at my job?”

“I’m...not going to talk again the rest of the night,” Jacob says weakly.

She nudges his hip with her own when she makes it around the counter. His smile is tentative, still, as she plates up the strudel for them, but it’s there; his dimples barely visible but enough for her thumb to fit its caress there, if she dared.

“Apple, right?”

“Apple _walnut_ ,” she corrects him emphatically, a little flourish as she hands him his plate.

“Ah. Well in that case, it definitely deserves whipped cream.” Jacob’s smile is wider, his dimples deeper, as he grabs for a can of whipped cream underneath the display glass. “If you tell anyone I use this and not homemade whipped cream I will have to ban you from the shop,” he tells her seriously.

“Cross my heart,” she swears. “Most of the time you don’t need to make it yourself, anyway.”

“I knew I liked you.”

It would be very easy, really, while Jacob’s head is bent like it is as he dollops cream on the plate in her hands, to lean forward.

“The feeling’s mutual.”

It’s quiet as they sit down at their table and start digging into Queenie’s strudel. She’s still messing with the spice she likes in the crust, but it’s not bad. She’s found the right vodka to keep the dough flaky even several hours after she first baked it, and Jacob is near humming as he eats it, grinning as he chews.

“Why do you even come here, if you can cook like this?”

She takes a sip of her tea. Her stomach is low and hot and there is a space between gulps of her drink where she feels dangerously close to honesty.

There is something that keeps her thinking about Jacob, and wanting to be near, and while Jacob is kind and clever and talented and no little bit handsome, Queenie can’t help but feel it’s ultimately because Jacob is decent, and expects nothing from her except maybe the same decency in return. There is something simple in it that feels like clean air in her lungs, cool water cupped in her hands.

“So I can learn to be better.”

Jacob’s mouth opens and closes twice before he takes another bite of strudel. “What appointment got you so bent out of shape, earlier?”

Queenie huffs around the rim of her cup. “Tina’s got this new case. The Barebones — was I supposed to mention that? Forget you heard that, please. Anyway. Sometimes her kids will come and I’ll cut their hair, a little something so they can feel a little better. But...Modesty and Credence are different. Tina is handling it different, even.”

“How so?”

She has no business telling him, of course. Tina didn’t really have any business telling Queenie in the first place.

“...How good are you at keeping secrets, Jacob?”

“If you really can’t say, I don’t mean to pry. You don’t have to tell me.”

“When Tina first got to her office, she had to shadow one of the older agents for a while. This was seven years ago, maybe? She had to go to the Barebones then, one of their neighbors called. But they didn’t find anything concrete, and Rafael didn’t want Tina to push it. She even got herself in trouble with her boss-boss after, because she wouldn’t drop it.”

“...And now she feels guilty.”

“The oldest, Credence, he was nearly twelve. She thinks he hates her now, for not being able to do anything then.”

Jacob licks his fork clean of remaining cream before carefully setting it on his plate. “Do you think so?”

He clears his throat when Queenie can only raise a brow. “You’re good with people. It’s like — sometimes, I think you can read minds. My mind, I mean. Hopefully not all of it, though. That would be strange. Creepy.”

She dares to rest her hand close enough to his their fingers brush.

“Credence has had to...shoulder a lot. I think, if I were in his position, after the years of — abuse...I wouldn’t think I’d like anyone to try and take it from me. The burden of it.”

Jacob blinks at her owlishly. His fingers might twitch near hers. “Why not? Wouldn’t it be a relief?”

“He loves his sister, and he doesn’t trust anyone else to protect her. He was underfoot the whole time I was cutting her hair, he wouldn’t stand anywhere he couldn’t have eyes on her. And, you know...you live with a burden so much, even if it makes you miserable you don’t trust anyone with it.”

“So he is upset with her.”

“He is upset with a lot. Tina is — very good at her job. She cares more than anyone I know. Sometimes that makes her too readable. Kids who grow up like Credence think that means something that sometimes it doesn’t. He’ll come around, though. He’s a good boy.”

Now, his finger does brush against the first knuckle on her index, firm enough to be purposeful.

“I’m sure you’re a damn good hair-dresser, but is there a reason you didn’t become a psychologist?”

“I…am dyslexic, actually. I hate reading, I probably would even if I wasn’t, and I didn’t want to sign myself up for years of it. And really, I didn’t want to study something I already knew, or felt I knew, and I…” Queenie trails off with a frown, unsure why she’s telling him this. She didn’t even like to talk to Tina about it, who always pushed her to go back.

_Tons of people with dyslexia do it! You’d be incredible!_

She grimaces. “I like doing hair. It’s its own therapy. I don’t think I would have really liked being a doctor or whatever. That’s the real reason.”

“That’s not a bad one.”

“Tina thinks I’m not applying myself fully, I think.”

“I bet she also appreciates free haircuts.”

Queenie grabs his plate, then her own, and walks back up to the counter to cut them more strudel.

“I knew I liked you, Jacob.”

-

Queenie has her wedding ring on when she calls her husband the next day.

“Queenie? Is everything alright?”

“Maybe I just wanted to say hi.”

“...Do you need money?”

She frowns. She spins the rock on her ring around her finger and clenches her fist around it. “When have I ever needed your money?”

“I’m sorry. I just...you took me off guard.”

She leans back into her sofa crease and props her feet up on her coffee table, nearly knocking over her lemonade. Althea did the best pedicures at the salon, and Queenie is in desperate need for one. She’d have to bring her chocolate chip muffins and trim Althea’s split ends, but Queenie thinks she can convince her for one before the weekend.

“Queenie? You with me? Are you sure everything’s alright?”

“Maybe I just wanted to talk to you. It’s been...what? How many months?”

It is just silence on the other end of the line for a minute. He won’t break it.

“Are you seeing anyone?”

“Q— I. What?”

“Is that too personal?”

“What is this about, Queenie?”

Her husband isn’t a talker. He also hates the phone. Had she forgotten that?

“I just...wanted to call. I love you, you know. I loved you a lot, for a man. We loved each other.”

“Queenie,” her husband huffs. “The only one who can read minds here is you. Help me out.”

“I’m sorry. I know you hate the phone. I don’t mean to upset you. I only called because I want a divorce.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to link the fic's playlist last chapter! [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/kddavis1121/playlist/3rmS0hk5QSrPJC2Aw70u02) is the link, if you're into that.
> 
> Thank you for reading!! Feedback is always cherished. :)

**Author's Note:**

> So this happened. Feedback is cherished and often tattooed on my physical person. Thank you for reading!


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